The real win when advertising on social media is having reliable ad management services that provide comprehensive solutions and cutting-edge technology to streamline your efforts. While placing ads on social media platforms may seem straightforward, effective ad management requires skilled professionals, adequate resources, and the right advertising technology to ensure your campaigns are on track.

Finding social media solutions that efficiently address all your needs can be challenging. The first step in looking for ad management services is identifying areas where you need assistance.

Why Ad Management Services Are a Smart Choice for Efficient Social Media Advertising

When evaluating ad management services, it’s important to look beyond basic tasks like campaign activation, routine checks, and reporting. Effective ad management involves a range of advanced features that can significantly enhance your social media advertising efforts.

Advanced Tools for Targeting and Audience Segmentation

While you may have a specific audience in mind for your campaigns, your chosen ad management services should offer advanced tools for more precise targeting and audience segmentation. Given the broad reach and diverse user demographics across social media platforms, effectively pinpointing your desired audience can pose a challenge.

What to look for:

• Advanced targeting capabilities, including demographic, geographic, and behavioral segmentation to refine your audience.
• Tools to assess whether your audience needs to be expanded or narrowed down to enhance campaign performance.
• Access to past audience data to provide actionable optimization tips for improving ad results.

Comprehensive Ad Monitoring Tool for KPI Measurement

91% of businesses use multiple social media platforms when advertising online. Thus, you need ad management services that can offer something that covers a measurement tool to make sure that all social media platforms are being monitored to make sure that they are continuing to deliver results. 

You should be able to compare results, for instance, TikTok vs. YouTube advertising, to determine which video ad platform performs better. This will allow you to present these results to your client and make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts.

What to look for:

• Comprehensive and transparent reporting tools that offer real-time data on key performance metrics.
• Clear and easy-to-understand data on impressions, view rates, engagement, conversions, CPM, CPV, CTR, etc.
• API integration with major social media advertising platforms and third-party analytics platforms.

Flexibility in Supporting Different Advertising Formats and Creatives

You need access to ad management services that can assist you in identifying the best ad formats based on your available creatives. While it’s understandable that your brand’s creatives are presented as is, the ad management services’ role is to develop a media plan and recommend advertising formats and placements where your creatives will be presented effectively and attractively to viewers.

What to look for:

• Support for a variety of ad formats (e.g., skippable ads, non-skippable ads, bumper ads, etc.)
• Advanced ad technology that helps determine which social ads can be combined or should be run as separate campaigns for optimal delivery and to avoid internal competition
• Extensive knowledge of safe zones and ad specifications to ensure your creatives are displayed in the correct format without concealed information.

Efficiency in Cost and Budget Management

One of the issues with social media advertising services is the lack of knowledge, for instance, about the average CPM for an awareness campaign. It can be easy to get lost when managing ads in programmatic advertising, and it may be unclear whether costs can be optimized.

Inefficient budget allocation can result in poor cost efficiency and wasted ad spending. Therefore, an effective ad management services agency should help control costs while improving results.

What to look for:

• Tools and features that enable precise budget management, cost control, and optimization strategies to maximize ad spend efficiency.
• Tools to monitor campaign pacing to ensure the full campaign flight is delivering and spending at an efficient rate.
• Transparent pricing models and bidding strategies that align with campaign goals.

Alignment with Brand Safety Standards and Compliance with Ad Platforms

Another concern in digital marketing is ensuring that your brand’s advertising campaigns comply with each platform’s guidelines. It is also important to prevent ads from appearing alongside inappropriate or non-brand-safe content, which can damage your brand’s reputation. 

For example, a school supplies brand should avoid having ads shown with alcohol or extreme activities content, while ads for a children’s charity should not appear with content related to war, drugs, or sexual material.

What to look for:

• Knowledge about brand safety measures and compliance with industry standards.
• Ad tech that provides content filtering, whitelisting/blacklisting capabilities, and is partnered with reputable brand safety organizations.

Once you identify your specific needs, the next step is to understand the strengths of these ad management services before inquiring. This is where Strike Social steps in, helping you address these concerns and turn them into your strengths.

Social Media Solutions Offered by Strike Social’s Ad Management Tools

Strike Social proudly presents the capabilities embedded in our digital marketing software, Campaign Lab, which has powered thousands of successful campaigns. As we approach a decade of delivering high-level optimization and results, let’s explore the ad management services that Strike Social provides to our clients.

Combining the machine learning and AI capabilities of Campaign Lab with the expertise of our media buying teams, we ensure campaigns run efficiently and can adapt to necessary optimizations. Below are our proprietary technology tools and expert optimizations:

Precise Audience Targeting with Campaign Generator

• The Campaign Generator tool recommends a media plan and provides additional targeting options based on the campaign objectives. It analyzes input criteria to suggest the most effective budget allocations and audience segments, serving as a guideline for optimizing campaigns effectively.
• Once we input fields such as ad platform and format, campaign start and end dates, budget, main metric (e.g., CPM), and bid cap (e.g., Max CPM), the Campaign Generator provides recommended budget splits and maximum rates per audience group targeting. 
• The data utilized in these recommendations is derived from historical data of previous successful campaigns. This information serves as an additional benchmark for media buyers, allowing them to make informed decisions toward improving campaign performance.

Gathering References from Previous Successful Campaigns

• Campaign Lab features a References tab that provides valuable insights, even if we haven’t run campaigns for a specific brand or client. This tab recommends references based on targeting, budget margins, and platform. These references can serve as a guide when optimizing campaigns during the management phase.
• For example, if we are running campaigns for an alcoholic beverage brand that is new to our system, despite not having run previous campaigns for this brand, Campaign Lab will provide us with references to other previous campaigns with similar campaign references, such as gambling, 18+, and the like. Thus, we can learn from successful strategies and avoid potential pitfalls based on past campaigns.

Setting Pricing Benchmarks with Data Insights

• The Data Insights feature provides a reference point for media buyers when determining pricing strategies. By inputting campaign specifics such as start and end dates, platform, budget, primary KPI, country/geo-targeting, and brand industry (if applicable), Campaign Lab offers insights into how metrics like CPM will perform.
• This information empowers media buyers to set appropriate campaign pricing, such as bid caps. It provides valuable benchmarks, including minimum CPM, maximum CPM, and median rates, allowing for better allocation of bid margins.
• When campaigns exceed expectations during the early stages, we communicate with clients to adjust the bid cap downwards. This transparent approach ensures clients know their campaigns’ strong performance while maintaining optimal profit margins.

Providing Suitable and Safe Channels for Your Ads

• During the planning phase of YouTube advertising campaigns, one key element of YouTube brand safety and suitability is making sure that ads only appear with content that you deem suitable for your brand. Within our ad management services tool, we have integrated the capability of providing suggested channels that are safe for your brand to run your ads with. 
• The Channel Recommender analyzes target audience behavior and preferences to suggest appropriate channels for YouTube ads.

• It provides a list of channels for targeting through placement or custom affinity. Additionally, we have integrated an automatic exclusion feature for YouTube Kids’ channels to prevent ads from appearing in those placements.
• Our media buying teams then scan through the provided channels to ensure they are currently active.

Ensuring Even Budget Distribution and Optimal Results

• Our digital marketing experts regularly use the Pacing Dashboard to monitor campaign pacing and performance, ensuring the correctness of parameters and creatives, maintaining optimal ad delivery, and making real-time adjustments to bids and budgets.
• This ad management tool helps meet campaign targets within the specified time frame, identify and rectify discrepancies early, and optimize overall campaign effectiveness.

How Strike Social’s Ad Management Services Deliver Results

Strike Social’s ad management tools and expert media buying teams have achieved remarkable results across thousands of successful campaigns. Here are some standout examples showcasing the effectiveness of our solutions:

YouTube Advertising Solutions for Aquarium Park Sign-Ups and Sales

By utilizing YouTube VAC, the team effectively engaged mobile-centric users and ensured that the most effective ad placements were focused on for budget. 

With optimal campaign pacing using our Pacing Dashboard, our media buying experts were able to monitor how the spending is tracking to ensure that both spending and returns are maximized throughout the campaign flight, driving the performing ad creatives to achieve more clickthroughs and conversions for the campaign.

Facebook Advertising for a Fitness Club Using DMA Geo-Targeting

The Facebook campaign aimed to drive sign-ups to their fitness club across their 200+ locations. By ensuring our ad management tool targets only the desired locations, we focused on demographics and location to attract highly qualified leads with strong sign-up intent. 

With a clear understanding of the target audience, we utilized our ad management services tool to create the audience profile without manual research.

Maximizing Video Views for an HVAC Brand’s YouTube Campaigns

Recognizing Canada’s strong sports culture, we tailored our strategy to target sports audiences for an HVAC brand. By using YouTube Video View Campaigns (VVC) along with Custom Intent and Custom Affinity audiences, we achieved impressive view rates and engagement levels, even for a non-sports brand.